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Lady Gaga’s Muse Tests His Poker Face

Luc Carl at St. Jerome's, a Lower East Side rock bar where he once worked. “Deep down, he's a wholesome Midwestern boy,” a former boss says.Credit
Michael Nagle for The New York Times

IT was a Friday night at St. Jerome’s, a rock bar on the Lower East Side, and AC/DC blasted from the speakers, the smoke machine was set to low visibility, and the crowd wanted to party. Best of all, Luc Carl was having an awesome hair day.

“I had it blown out,” Mr. Carl said of his ’do, which, like his entire being, harks back to the high-volume era of bands like Mötley Crüe. Holding court by the bar, in skintight dark jeans, a black leather vest and a bandanna, Mr. Carl yelled over the music, “I’m in my element!”

Mr. Carl was a bartender and manager at St. Jerome’s for five years, starting in 2005. Tall and extroverted, with dreams of becoming a rock star, he treated the bar as his stage: dressing in leather and spandex, giving theme parties (“World-Famous Tribute to Hair Metal”) and hiring D.J.s and go-go dancers.

“He was like the king of Rivington Street,” Georgie Seville, a night-life promoter and friend, recalled.

One of the regulars during Mr. Carl’s reign was Stefani Germanotta, a k a Lady Gaga, with whom he had a tempestuous six-year romance. She ranked him, along with her father and Jesus, as one of the three most important men in her life.

When the couple briefly reunited after Lady Gaga hit it big, the news media took an interest in Mr. Carl and his rocker look. Vogue said he was a “boyishly cute heavy-metal-looking dude,” while The New York Post called him “a reedy peacock of a rock boy.”

“Go ahead, ask me about the ex,” Mr. Carl, 31, said amiably (nonetheless, he reacted to questions with an increasingly tortured look).

Mr. Carl is happier discussing his new memoir, “The Drunk Diet,” in which he chronicles his makeover from an out-of-shape, chain-smoking party animal into, as he immodestly puts it, “the sexiest man in the world.” While there are profanity-laced weight-loss tips and a bookstore-friendly subtitle (“How I Lost 40 Pounds ...Wasted”), the book is not, as the obligatory medical disclaimer states, an actual diet plan.

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Luc Carl, who has a new memoir, “The Drunk Diet,” poses at Ludlow Manor, a Lower East Side club that he had a role in opening.Credit
Michael Nagle for The New York Times

He is also a host on SiriusXM Radio’s “Hair Nation” channel, which is devoted to ’80s hair bands, and, until recently, he was involved in opening a new three-story nightclub nearby called Ludlow Manor. But his main devotion these days is staying healthy.

“I was a real smoker, man — die-hard,” Mr. Carl said. “I’d wake up at 5 in the morning to go to the bathroom and suck down three or four of them.”

Feeling flabby two years ago, which may or may not have something to do with a breakup with Lady Gaga, he went in search of a diet guide, but, he said, “all the books had a person with extremely chiseled everything on the cover.”

“I’m not the abs guy,” he said. So he decided to write his own fitness and diet manual.

His secret to losing 40 pounds (he has since lost another 15) was running, which he does, logging 50 to 75 miles a week. He completed four marathons last year and ran a half-marathon during a snowstorm in January in Central Park, finishing just behind a man whose left eyelid was frozen shut.

“It’s such a high, but it’s a drug you have to earn,” Mr. Carl said after that race, icicles dangling from his mutton chops.

Still, the fitness regimen hasn’t kept Mr. Carl from pursuing a good time. He and his friends appear like time-warp denizens of the Sunset Strip, circa 1986, where life’s major concerns were looking good, meeting girls and scoring Crüe tickets.

At St. Jerome’s, the male singer of a band called the Dirty Pearls paid Mr. Carl the highest compliment, “Hair looks good tonight.”

Mr. Carl beamed, drinking a bottle of Budweiser. “Thanks, man.” In an aside, he added, “My stylist is the stylist for the cast of ‘Chicago.’ ”

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From left, Brian Newman, Mr. Carl, Joseph Germanotta and Tommy London at an awards show where Lady Gaga, Mr. Germanotta's daughter and Mr. Carl's ex, was honored.Credit
Marie Havens/PatrickMcMullan.com

LIKE many great bartenders, Mr. Carl, who grew up in Nebraska, is an unrestrained flirt, charming women with a mix of sweetness and macho bluster.

In her biography of Lady Gaga, “Poker Face,” Maureen Callahan writes that the singer became smitten with Mr. Carl after seeing him behind the bar at St. Jerome’s. Not an uncommon reaction, apparently. “He’s very charming,” said Lisa Gartner, an owner of Welcome to the Johnsons, another Lower East Side bar where Mr. Carl worked. “The thing I found endearing about him is that, deep down, he’s a wholesome Midwestern boy. He might have this rock-star glamour thing, but he’s a good guy.”

When they met, Lady Gaga was an uptown private-school girl struggling to find her creative voice, while Mr. Carl, a drummer, was playing in bands and connected in the downtown rock scene through his bartending jobs. He introduced her to his friends, and partly inspired many of her songs, including “Paparazzi,” “Heavy Metal Lover” and “You and I,” a love song in which she sings nostalgically about her “cool Nebraska guy.”

“He was totally a muse to her,” said Mr. Seville, who said that he accompanied the couple on one of their first dates.

Rock ’n’ roll is full of muses (Pattie Boyd, for instance, who inspired George Harrison’s “Something” and Eric Clapton’s “Layla”), but they have traditionally been women.

Asked what he thought about joining the club, Mr. Carl laughed and said, “Are you comparing me to girls?”

Though Lady Gaga has discussed their relationship in the news media, Mr. Carl has remained quiet because, he said, he believes it is a private matter. Even now, his nonstop, occasionally outrageous monologue stumbles to an uncomfortable halt when her name is mentioned.

“The truth is that she was a huge part of my life for a long time, longer than people realize,” Mr. Carl said after much prodding.

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Mr. Carl's not-really-a-diet-guide memoir credits his weight loss to running 50 to 75 miles a week.

“Sometimes things don’t work out,” he added. “I was madly in love for a long time.”

Friends say that Mr. Carl has handled the situation well, considering that Lady Gaga’s voice resounds from every TV and radio in the land, inescapable. “It would be one thing if it were, like, Karen O,” said Mr. Seville, referring to the singer of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. “But Lady Gaga is a whole other category.”

Is there anything else to do but put on a pair of sneakers and run?

Mr. Carl said he is currently unattached and focusing his energies on his next marathon. He described his dream woman as someone like Ginger, the Las Vegas showgirl played by Sharon Stone in “Casino.” He named his 1966 El Camino in her honor. It was pointed out that Ginger burns through cash, drives onto the front lawn of her house after a marital spat and performs a sex act on her husband’s best friend in a parking lot. “That part I don’t like,” Mr. Carl said.

But, he added: “When a girl can walk into a room and just light it up like a Christmas tree, that’s the girl I want. I’d like to think I can promise her the same in return.”

THESE days, Mr. Carl no longer tends bar at St. Jerome’s, though he goes there regularly.

Like a star quarterback returning to his old high school and encountering his replacement, he seemed to regard the new bartender skeptically. “I don’t know about this guy,” he said, after a drink order was slow in being filled.

Mr. Carl was involved in another night-life venture backed by Mr. Seville and others — the showy Ludlow Manor. Although tabloid reports said he was booted out as an owner, Mr. Carl said he was brought in only to manage a bar on the second floor called the Casino. Problems with the liquor license led to the split, he said; on a recent evening the space sat empty, with dusty, upturned tables scattered about.

“My life is very volatile, man,” Mr. Carl said. He added that he thinks he had been used by the owners to get “free press.” (Mr. Seville demurred, saying that he brought in Mr. Carl because he was “the “king” who turned St. Jerome’s around.)

Now, Mr. Carl focuses on his SiriusXM show (he picked up a second gig on Ozzy Osbourne’s channel), and he believes “The Drunk Diet” will start a small fitness revolution among the non-gym crowd.

He already has the look and the life perfected. At St. Jerome’s, after finishing another Budweiser and stuffing bills into à go-go dancer’s bikini bottom, Mr. Carl joined his friends in singing the lyrics to AC/DC’s “Sin City.” When the song ended, Mr. Carl grew momentarily reflective.

“My look doesn’t make sense on the subway,” he said. “But in a nightclub, with the lights low, my hair and my look make sense.”

Correction: March 8, 2012

An earlier version of this article misidentified the SiriusXM Radio “Hair Nation” channel as a show.

A version of this article appears in print on March 8, 2012, on page E1 of the New York edition with the headline: Lady Gaga’s Muse Tests His Poker Face. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe